Edit: Take the below with a grain of salt, this is one personal experience which can/should not be extrapolated from. There are good/bad people in all nations.
When I was 16 we were on vacation and played waterball in a pool against a russian family. When they realized we were winning (all members of my family were playing handball for life, so this was no wonder) they started to do things like pulling pants and punching underneath the water surface, scratching with the fingernails etc. They still lost.
Back then I could not understand why anyone would deploy such methods in a game during their vacation. For me personally, it would be entirely unpleasant and unenjoyable to envolve myself that much in a non-serious game. But maybe the answer is contained in that video: Maybe it is just much more normal to deploy the whole arsenal of what you can do in russian culture. I guess if you don't try everything and then loose you are seen as an idiot or as a weak person. I grew up in a culture where the rules of society are taken comparedly serious, so for me playing unfair is a sign of weakness (proof you cannot win by the rules).
While the Russian kids were playing by the rules (at least not significantly outside of that) especially the British kiddos did everything they could to win the medals we received in these games from the hotel.
So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing. I have great experiences with Russian people while I was cheated by Brits. Should I deduce all Russians are great people? Or all Brits are cheaters? Probably would be a bad idea.
There clearly are different cultures. But talking about that as if this means people a a homogenized blob of that culture does not pay justice to the people who went to the streets in Russia to protest against the war for example. Or to the people that only know the propaganda side of this war on any side.
You are surely right there, but having played with a ton of kids from all nationalities as well (football, handball, whatever) this episode still stood out for me, because it was much more brutal than anything else I had experienced out of tournaments and "serious" games. The game in question here was not even a hotel tournament, it was just a "hey, wanna play a round"-kind of game.
However: as you rightly mentioned it is unwise to extrapolate from this one experience onto the character of a group of people (I added this in the post above). This was not my intention here, it was just a very memorable experience and I never quite understood why it escalated the way it did.
Although governments that run countries would have you believe there is such a thing as a country - this is merely a fiction that is commonly believed. There are no countries, just beliefs. There are no collectives either - that too is a belief.
There really are individuals though.
I think I can reasonably conclude from watching their perspective that he's masterful in deception.
We all know that pretty much all of us here have nothing to really add to the discussion, so we might as well have some fun.
Interesting question, but not one that my post circled about. As someone who grew up at the border between three nations/languages I can assure you that even within a 100 mile radius differing history and culture can change how a average person from that nation behaves. This is curious and one can spend a lot of time pondering about where these slight differences come from – and learn a lot about other cultures and maybe even your own on the way.
What one should – however – not do is extrapolating the character of individuals from their perceived nationality (something I never suggested would be a good idea).
> There are no countries, just beliefs.
Citation needed. I also believe that the idea of the nation is indeed a story we tell ourselves. But firstly stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful: They shape actual physical reality and individual actions, and secondly the difference in languages does shape our thinking and our actions and this also has been studied. Nation borders are often also language borders.
I fucking hate jerks. But sometimes jerks move in and out being classified as jerks, probably myself included, probably you too, dear reader. But when they're being jerks I fucking hate jerks. But if I haven't met them yet, then I haven't defined them as a jerk because in my life's experience I've met jerks that cross any and all classification boundaries; tall and short, old and young, male and female, American, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, Vietnamese, German, white-skinned, dark-skinned, olive-skinned, blue eyed, hazel-eyed, blonde-haired, ginger-haired, bald, purple-mohawked (that's actually not true, I've never come a cross a purple-mohawked jerk, but I'm sure someone has).
Everyone should rally against jerks, but there's no way to recognise one quickly and easily without going through the unpleasant interaction that tars them with the jerk brush.
And that's why we should dislike them, because they disguise themselves so well, and that's a learned skill of the jerk, because it'd be too difficult to go around being a jerk if there was an easy way to tell them all apart from the majority of nice people that make the world worthwhile enough to put up with jerk-kind.
We have one. narcissism, which is characterized by: Lack of empathy. Having an inflated sense of self-importance. Entitlement. Manipulative behavior. Needs constant admiration. Expects special treatment. Exaggerates achievements and talents. Reacts negatively to criticism, immediately will go on the offense. Being preoccupied with fantasies about power, success, and beauty. Secret anxiety due to feelings of inadequacy.
"There are two races of men in this world - the decent man and the indecent man."
-Viktor Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning'
[1] https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/04/odobrenie-institutov-polozh...
The common people are not "all the same". They can be made to hate and kill others, and under some leaders, in some eras and so on.
Yet — extrapolating from predominant culture in a country to everybody living in it is wrong as well.
I grew up in a 40% right wing environment and I got out of there as soon as I had the chance. Others either don't have the chance or can't so it because other things bind them to a place. The free spirits in such places suffer immensly. Yet you could argue that you are not helping them if you just tolerate their outrageous leaders.
In primary/elementary school there were a couple of Russian students. One called Vova was in my class. One day he stole my Pokémon game. Fair(ish) enough, others had stolen other stuff at that school occasionally. But no, he wiped my save file and then went on a tirade of lies to the teachers that it had been his game all along.
It utterly baffled young me as to why you'd go to those lengths.
I'm beginning to form a hypothesis about why Putin's "Russians and Ukrainians are one people" rhetoric is such a big and important part of the background to this invasion: This whole concept of Russia growing out of Kievan Rus has, as I understand it, long been part of the Russian self-image. In reality, though, at least as far as the actual Russian state is concerned, that's not true at all -- Russia is the descendant of Muscovy[1], not Kiev (=Kyiv). But, as that contrasting-pictures-of-cathedrals-vs-forest meme that did the rounds last week so brilliantly illustrates, Muscovy has pretty much no early history at all -- AFAICR it really rose to prominence only after the Mongol invasions, so it's late-medieval. Kiev, OTOH, goes back to at least the Vikings and Byzantines, so pre- or early-medieval.
So I'm beginning to think this whole conflation of Russia's history with Ukraine's is just Russia looking to shore up its histirical legitimacy. Rulers, particularly autocratic and authoritarian ones, have always wanted to make their country look ancient and venerable: The Swedish Vasa kings consigned a Historia from Olaus Rudbeck that purported to show how Sweden was actually Atlantis reincarnated; Czar Ivan The Terrible, from the original to the current incarnation, tried to usurp Ukraine's history as that of Muscovy.
(No idea how original this is; probably not at all. I mean, it's hard to believe that real historians would have missed it all these years... But not having studied anywhere near enough history, I hadn't seen it before I came up with it on my own.)
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[1]: And, OK, I suppose to some extent of Novgorod.
The same goes for any other Nordic (and Baltic) countries.
The current Russian regime likes to demonstrate its power now and then, though, and to try and project its influence through intimidation. They can do that with their significantly smaller neighbours with no risk of military retaliation.
There are risks, of course, but those would be in the form of deteriorating relationships and the associated economical costs, or from losing overall international rapport and respect. Those don't seem to matter much to the current regime in Russia, though.
I also think its stupid to be a direct Russian neighbour and claim neutrality, but I don't connect that to how Finns are generally portrayed in Russia. (I hold that opinion just on general strategic and historical grounds.) In fact, I didn't even know Finns are generally portrayed some particular way in Russia.
So, how are Finns generally portrayed in Russia in your experience, and/or how is that realated to the stupidity of being neighbours with Russia and claiming neutrality?
https://ghostbin.com/tjYA8/raw
(Somewhat amusingly, Pastebin refused to accept it due to "objectionable content")
So, TL;DR: IMO the subtitles are somewhat weak on concluding the correct wording from context.
Oh, and I can't access your link at all. Locked/blocked/taken down? Perhaps there's a time limit on this ghostbin thingy?
[EDIT:] Changed my somewhat un-charitable "the translation is far from perfect" to "not quite": They got "Laiska Jaakko" ("Lazy Jacob"[2]) --> "Jacob de la Gardie" right[3], bravo! [/EDIT]
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[1]: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=1114
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie#Death_and_l...
Further, the explanations seem to differ whether they're addressed to Russians or to other countries. Russia's own population tends to get what they want to hear (which we often consider bizarre), and what the West gets doesn't matter much what (because the West has already proven they don't understand Russia even on the big things so why not lie about military training near Ukrainian border as well just to avoid any extra yet futile discourse?)
With delusions in the case of Ukraine I refer to the idea that Ukraine never was a real country and it has belonged to Russia all the time. This falls in line with the worldview of the ex-KGB grandpas from the Soviet era but there's a notable difference they don't seem to accept. Back in the Soviet times USSR had the (fire)power to keep their member states in line and practically own the local governments. There was nowhere to go and it wasn't until the USSR was disbanded that the small Eastern European countries could run away. And run away they did. But Ukraine and Belarus are so close to Russia that it can be easy to think of them as extensions of Russia if you assume you can retain control over the countries, both politically and ultimately militarily. But Russia is much weaker than USSR. Russia have Belarus because, to my understanding, their president basically sold his country to Russia to personally remain in "power" but Ukraine has been looking to West much more than to Mother Russia. And they overruled their Russian leaning president and replaced him with one who's much more open to the West. Here's where I think the delusion comes to play.
Russia somehow thought it would be a simple matter to put Ukraine back in line to avoid them drifting too far into West. Like a father who had no trouble beating his son when he was a kid, the son is now a young adult and the father is much older and weaker, and it's necessary to realize the change. So far, Russia seems to be stuck with the idea that they can maintain control in Ukraine, even after a war. But Russia doesn't seem to be in any position to boss their neighbours around like USSR could.
Even if I ultimately believe that what Russia wanted was Crimea with their old naval city and a land route over there I think they figured why not just go for the whole Ukraine while they're at it, and for once reset the country with a government that makes things easier for Russia in the future. The old USSR could've done that but Russia can't, yet Russia acts as if they're still operating like in the times of USSR. To achieve a "reset" like that you need citizens who agree with you or who are so oppressed that they won't revolt. Russia has neither.
You mean the russian tank (armata) that they found out they can't build en masse? Or those 40 or 50 years old tanks actually used in Ukraine, which were new during USSR but not so much anymore, and javelins make a quick work out of them. At least from those that don't break by themselves due to poor maintenance (which is due to theft and corruption and general russian approach).
I saw some pictures how the pockets of active armor were empty or stuffed with egg paper wrappings. Again. Same happened in Georgia. Some mighty army. Soldiers selling gas to belarus civilians just before the invasion. Then running out of it in the fields. This conflict showed how weak their army is in conventional conflict.
That being said they have some impressively horrifying thermobaric weapons like TOS-1 which they currently use on civilians. But it doesn't seem they have a lot of it and those alone don't win wars.
Actually those are spacers for ERA plates. They just forgot to put it between spacers.
So still clinging to the thought that Putin has some kind of grand plan behind him is wishful thinking at best
Do you read the news from russian medias directly? (I can't)
Placing weapons next door to any powerful entity is recipe for conflict. It sounds like you're repeating the same talking points over and over.
Russia felt threatened and attacked. What did the US do to Cuba when the Soviets put weapons there? Oh, that's right. Eternal embargo. No war because they couldn't risk it at the time.
How can you feel so rightous is beyond me
Based on...?
> Russia felt threatened and attacked.
By what? By Ukraine's Bayraktars?
If you want me to get off my high horse, please provide something that can change my position
This guy would rather see smaller independent states swallowed by Russia than provide any kind of resistance. Surely you understand that as a neighbouring country to Russia who has dealt with subtle threats from them for the past 80 years that there's absolutely no kind of sympathy for this viewpoint over here.
Kreml's human embodiment resembles a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks everyone is out to "get them" when in reality it's their irrational warmongering that countries want to shield themself from. Or do you really think NATO has some super secret agenda of assembling an offensive for conquering Moscow?
Believe it or not I sympathize with the generic Russian citizen's autonomy and interest for retaining their own identity and culture. It's a tremendous shame all this has happened. As a Finn, we could have a great country right next to our border with something completely culturally unique and different from your average European country, which more and more meld culturally into a generic Euro-American amalgamation, indistiguishable from each other.
Instead it's turned into a nightmare dictatorship which has now ruined everything above and more importantly has potential life-threatening consequences to me personally and my country.
There is nothing here but sorrow for everyone involved.
I am of the opinion that it's not all their fault and there are other bad actors. Worse even.
I can't take this talk seriously. it's just a bunch of history bits used to explain and reinforce stereotypes about Russians. "Russians like strong leaders" because Russia was once invaded by mongols who also had strong leaders. Russians always think the leader is infallible because he gets his power from God. Then almost in the next sentence he says Russians hate Gorbachev because he ruined the Soviet Union. It's all just a bunch of shower thoughts. All it does it reinforces stereotypes and hate.
What are you talking about? There have never been any democracy in Russia.
But yeah, that's at most two decades out of the last thousand years or whatever. So on the whole as soon as the Russian people have got rid of one dictatorship, they seem to have been pretty damn eager to replace it with another one.
To pin this on the Russian people is ludicrous. I think Russia has been consistently dealt a bad hand when it comes to leadership. And interference from the "west" has also been a negative influence in modern times. Consider Lenin[1] and western economic advice that led to the looting of the Russian state after the fall of communism[2].
[1] https://m.dw.com/en/how-germany-got-the-russian-revolution-o...
[2] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-piratization-ru...
When you're dealt a bad hand, it's your responsibility as citizens to do something about it.
That's the part that Russians don't seem to get. As the video describes, it's as if they they enjoy suffering and oppression. Nothing wrong with that, I guess... whatever floats your boat, no kink-shaming here. But don't expect it to catch on elsewhere.
The endless complaints about 'the others' completely mitigates the facts that its Russians who stole from Russia and made it into crap place it is now. You want a simple proof? Check nationalities of all the oligarchs, all the politicians at power.
No Space Aliens came down in their UFOs and bequeathed enlightenment and democracy on anyone else in the world either. It's up to each people themselves.
This is either a victim of Russian propaganda, or an agent of Russian propaganda.
As to the presented ideas in the talk - as someone who knows Russia well, speaks Russian, has Russian family, he’s spot on - but no Russian will ever agree, because that is part of their complex.
Luckily for me, I did actually spent 1 hour watching the video (more like 4 hours in between managing kids) and it made sense of many things I didn't understand before. As somebody coming from country brutally occupied by russian forces for 21 years on a 'friendly special mission', yes the part about mentality is spot on.
I don't think Putin is on some holy mission for slav unification, seeing how he immediately ordered 10,000 chechen killers on their closest slavic neighbor. He is just an ordinary smart thug, highly functioning sociopath, who got lucky being at the right time and place and having good KGB experience to get him to the top and sustain.
Also, its a great lecture on how to not even react and completely ignore the russian news full of 'pravda', intended to just divert attention from other nefarious activities purported by them. Don't play the games they lay for the west.
How so?
What I specifically want to hear from you - presumably someone knowledgeable about the political history of the Russian Federation - is how the Yeltsin administration was more democratic. Because my understanding is that the Yeltsin administration was extremely unstable (ie Yeltsin shelling the Russian white house after trying to unconstitutionally dissolve the parliament).
Yes, their attempt was a miserable failure in many ways, but it was a democracy, albeit a very shallow one.
I feel like ever since the Ukraine invasion Russia has been down-graded from "flawed democracy' to 'autocratic dictatorship' - I mean it's not Switzerland but it's hardly North Korea..
And usually has a pretty light touch on this kind of stuff compared to Australia, Canada or the UK.
So no, that in itself is not enough to prove to me that Russia is an autocratic dictatorship, when parliamentary democracies all over the world have similar laws - they reserve the right to throw you in jail for content that expresses threats against the regime.
What exactly? I could not find anything by Googling on material which would land you in jail for 14 years.
d) Promotes criminal acts or acts of terrorism; or
e) Represents any particular class of the public as inherently inferior as a result of a characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.
https://www.dia.govt.nz/Digital-Child-Exploitation-Objection...
So yes, non-CP content is punishable by 14 years in prison if it's against the "regime". What Russia is doing is hardly unprecedented.
---
The broader point I was trying to make here is that more democratic does not mean more pro-western.
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[1]: "Western"?!? NZ is about as far East as you can get, innit? Oh well, you know, "generally regarded as non-dictatorships".
You seem to have your categories mixed up: Democratic or not is orthogonal to stable or not.
He choses some (very cherry picking) facts and anecdotes from Russian history, cites them with factual mistakes, but he choses and interpretes them so they meet his theory. This is not scientific approach at all.
But what outraged me the most and made me sceptical about his theory - it is his interpretation of "two layers of truth" in Russian, namely "pravda" and "istina". Even Nabokov wrote about the difference of these words and claimed they are one of those Russian words that are lacking in other languages.
The difference is the following: - "pravda" is mere facts, something that is not false - "istina" is the whole picture
The best example of difference between these concepts is this lecture itself: mainly it consists of valid facts (i.e. it is "pravda"), but the whole analysis and conclusions he makes are flawed (i.e. it is NOT "istina").
And this intelligence colonel claims he had been studying Russia for 15 years? Hmm, then he either spent them in vain, or he was misinforming the audience. Or both.
He cites Kennan, the architect of the Cold war, and Kennan was way much better in understanding Russia. Maybe, because Kennan was practioner and not fascinated about making up groundless theories. I invite you to read Kennan's article in NYT (1997) and understand why Kennan considered NATO's expansion to Russian borders to be fateful error: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.h...
And the consequences of this error are thoroughly explained in this FPRI article (2022): https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-str...
These two articles will be more insightful than (sorry) any made up theories from Finnish intelligence colonel.
Examples my friend, we need concrete examples. Otherwise this is like all other pro-Kreml astroturfing accounts which cry about Russia being misrepresented except they can never show any example exactly how they are being misrepresented.
Simply arguing semantics of pravda and istina and then calling the lecture false doesn’t mean anything.
And as it happens I read the Rob Lee article February 21st or 22nd in anticipation of the attack.
Question to you is - how does it provide anything of a conflicting point to the lecture? Zelensky tries to distance Ukraine from Russian political interference, so its OK to raze the country to the ground because…???
Or, as people used to languages with articles would be more likely to say, from a Finnish intelligence colonel.
(You know, Slavic languages' lack of the articles make really easy spot native speakers write English.)
Also I bet you Putin wants these high yield parts, controlling not only Europe's oil and gas supply but also lots of their food supply can only be good for Putin. Look at how much Germany was trying not piss him off even while cruise missiles were destroying Ukraine:
http://static.producer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Ukrain...
So a little more on the coast too (Odessa). If he does leave some of Ukraine in the hands of Ukrainians to end the war and go back to selling Europe gas and oil then a land locked Ukraine would make much less of a threat later too.
And while we are at it why not try for the whole thing? There's a good plan B there. And if you're gonna threaten WWIII, do it for as much gain as you can.
Why the west? Sanctions against Russia should stay on place until they agree to pay for the reparations.
They seem equally likely to pay the reparations as Mexico is to pay for a wall.
Then over time take money from Russia as possible. Plus all the frozen assets.
We don't know the strategy and the plan. We might, even maybe reasonably, deduce that Russian leadership thought that Ucrain would fall more quickly. And that some form of stable solution would be the result.
But most people don't only have one plan to reach a longer term strategic goal. So thinking of "the Russians" as rational players (and taking a lot of potentially missing information into account due to every body only hearing their own side's propaganda) we could at least ask ourselves, if the plan was to overthrow the Ucrain quickly, to probably secure the Donbas and also probably secure the water resources for the Crimean peninsula as a strategic necessity, what course of action remains for Putin now that at least the quickness of the action failed. While there are already people reporting that Russia secured most of the Donbas and the water resources for the Crimean. But how much is propaganda there, I don't know.
So Putin needs to appear as the winner in the end. At least internally. He needs to sell this to his power base and his own ego as well probably.
The west wants/needs to see the Ucrain at least as partial winner. And the sanctions to have worked (because that was sold as solution to the voters).
Can there be a way to end the killing, save thousands of lives and reach these goals? I don't know. But I would be at least hesitant to call Putin irrational. Maybe that is valid if one defines the criteria of evaluation up front. What defines 'rational'. Because I suggest that within Putin's worldview these actions make some forms of sense to him and. As said. From the outside perspective it might be reasonable to call it irrational. But that might not help the world in finding a way out. For that one needs to understand why it makes sense to Putin to act the way he does right now.
Unilaterally declaring other insane or crazy or anything like that, while making ourselves feel good and superior, doesn't help in understanding why people act like they do.
And understanding might help in finding better ways to act and reach common goals like reducing the number of people suffering in the Ucraine right now.
Take the Nuremberg trials for example. As a German emotionally I think more people should have been trialed. More punished by hanging. Especially the SS troops managing the concentration camps. And while it would probably have felt like righteous punishment of these crazy evil German Nazi Bastards it probably would not have helped in building a stable western democracy in at least one part of Germany.
That is the reason I tey to think in understanding the motives and thought processes of people involved. Not to delude myself or argue for the deeds of Putin to be less than the despicable acts of war they are.
Putin should clearly be tried as the war criminal he is. Together with the ruling elite. But that doesn't make my need to understand go away.
Why not? If they in fact are insane, then how would not realising that be useful?
On the contrary, I'd say if they are and we realise that they are, we have a much better chance at understanding why they act like they do than if we pretend they aren't.
>Ucrain
I don't know. Just a smell.
Not just a smell; more of a stench.
Blowing up stuff is certainly bad, but their lack of planning met considerable resistance
Not to mention the strict top-down delegation and low morale.
Putin’s Russia is a police state pretending to be a military state.
Putin behavior makes lots of sense. In fact way more sense that European leaders for example.
For example: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuc...
There is a video of that more than ten years ago.
Here Putin was saying that Germany energy strategy was nuts and he was right. How stupid some leader could be to make her country dependent on outside countries for something as strategic as energy?
Putin told everybody what he thought about Ukraine. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Even the "I will push the nuclear button because I have nothing to loose" is pretty rational. It worked wonders multiple times.
Just because he is our enemy now does not mean he is stupid. He is not.
I have been spamming this lecture everywhere since the war started and again I think anyone who's still questioning the Russian operative reality should watch it:
Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel (subtitles) | December 3, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw